Description
LittleSis.org (the opposite of Big Brother) is a free, open source power mapping database and research wiki. The site publishes data on the political, financial, and social networks of over 200,000 powerful individuals and organizations, from corporate executives and politicians to banks and think tanks. By bringing transparency to these networks, we work to challenge the excessive influence of billionaires and corporations in our democracy.Responsibilities
We are seeking a full-time, full-stack web developer to help bring LittleSis.org to the next level of functionality, visibility, and data coverage. We are looking for someone who wants to put their coding skills to work to challenge the power structure, in tandem with a growing community of watchdog researchers, journalists, and activists.
The developer will work under the direction of the site's founders, Matthew Skomarovsky and Kevin Connor, and will often work closely with journalists, activists, and LittleSis research staff. Remote work is acceptable, though we are based in New York City and Buffalo and we would prefer a developer based in the Northeast.
Day-to-day work will involve a healthy balance of new features, experimental projects, refactoring old code, and basic maintenance. Major projects will include:
- Writing web scrapers to integrate valuable data on corporate leadership and investment networks, campaign finance and lobbying relationships, and nonprofit funding structures
- Improving analytical tools on the site, with a focus on Oligrapher, our network visualization tool
- Building more powerful and user-friendly data editing tools, including a bulk data uploader that makes use of automated - Entity name resolution to streamline the upload process
The ideal candidate for this position is energized by LittleSis' mission, user-centered in their approach, and equally skilled at rapid prototyping, thoughtful application architecture, and patient debugging. We strongly prefer a developer with some UX and web design experience.
Technology Stack
You should be familiar with most of our technology stack and interested in learning the rest:
Ruby: Rails, RSpec JavaScript: jQuery, D3, React, Redux
PHP: Symfony, WordPress Bootstrap, SASS SVG MySQL Memcache Apache Ubuntu AWS Git Docker
In the future our stack might also involve:
- Graph databases, graph analysis, GraphQL
- Natural Language Processing for web scraping and named entity resolution
- ElasticSearch
- Continuous integration
How to Apply:
Before applying for the job you should spend a little time familiarizing yourself with the LittleSis website, its API, its network visualization tool, and some of our past successes (http://www.democracynow.org/2013/10/18/the_military_industrial_pundits_conflicts_of).
http://littlesis.org
http://api.littlesis.org/documentation http://github.com/skomputer/oligrapher2
Pay is generous for a non-profit and includes health benefits.
To apply, write to the email address below with your resume, cover note, and a link to your github account or a relevant code sample.
We are committed to a diverse workplace. People of color, people with disabilities, women, and LGBT candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.